Session initiation protocol stack optimisation

ABSTRACT

Apparatus comprising a Session Initiation Protocol agent ( 9 ) arranged to send and receive Session Initiation Protocol messages to and from peer Session Initiation Protocol agents. The apparatus is configured, for a Session Initiation Protocol message to be sent, to translate ( 10 ) one or more header fields of the message into an alternative format and to include ( 11 ) the translated field(s) within or prefixed to the message, together with the untranslated field(s).

TECHNICAL FIELD

The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for optimising the handling of Session Initiation Protocol messages within the Session Initiation Protocol stack at network nodes.

BACKGROUND

The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is a text-based protocol specified by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in RFC 3261, similar to Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), for initiating interactive communication sessions between users. Such sessions include voice, video, chat, interactive games, and virtual reality. A key objective in the development of SIP was simplicity and the reuse of existing Internet mechanisms. Not only is SIP text based (where individual characters are encoded using the 8-bit UCS/Unicode Transformation Format (UTF-8) character set), at least the header portions of SIP messages are essentially human readable to simplify the message creation and debugging processes.

SIP messages are handled by SIP agents. A SIP agent may be present at a user terminal or at a network-based node, in particular at SIP proxies and SIP Application Servers (ASs). A particular SIP agent receiving a SIP message might in some cases only need to look at one or a small number of fields within a SIP message in order to handle a message, for example it may only need to look at the “To” field which contains a destination SIP address.

The human readable format of SIP message headers makes the parsing of messages at network nodes incorporating a SIP agent, a computationally difficult process. Parsing involves searching and interpreting the header for particular text strings, e.g. in order to identify the address or Universal Resource Identifier (URI) of the called party (e.g. “sip:bob@biloxi.com”). The problem is compounded by the fact that SIP does not specify a field order within the SIP header. Parsing is a particular problem in communication networks such as the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) specified by 3GPP for the provision of multimedia services to mobile subscribers, where a message may pass though a large number of SIP nodes and be parsed separately at each, e.g. at a Call Session Control Function (CSCF) or SIP Application Server (AS). On some occasions it may even be necessary to parse a message multiple times within the same node (e.g. at different components within the node). This could be the case, for example, where multiple SIP servlets within multiple application server instances are deployed at the same node. It might also be the case when a SIP agent is implemented using components written in different programming languages (e.g. C++ and Java), so that the components cannot reuse each others parsing result. This could easily happen when third party software is used, or during other integration activities. In any case, the computational overhead introduced by handling messages within the SIP stack can be considerable, giving rise to resource problems particularly at nodes handling a high volume of SIP message traffic.

SUMMARY

It is an object of the present invention to reduce the processing overhead associated with the handling of SIP messages at a SIP node. This object is achieved by introducing into a SIP message, or appending thereto, code which is in a machine-friendly format and which is either a translation of one or more text-based fields or points to the relevant fields.

According to a first aspect of the present invention there is provided apparatus comprising a Session Initiation Protocol agent arranged to send and receive Session Initiation Protocol messages to and from peer Session Initiation Protocol agents, characterised in that the apparatus is configured, for a Session Initiation Protocol message to be sent, to translate one or more header fields of the message into an alternative format and to include the translated field(s) within or prefixed to the message, together with the untranslated field(s).

It will be appreciated that a SIP node receiving a message constructed in accordance with the present invention does not have to perform the computationally intensive process of parsing all text fields of the message in order to identify information required to handle the message. The relevant information is easily extracted using the machine-friendly header.

Preferably, the translated fields have a structured format, i.e. the fields have a fixed (byte) size and a fixed location. This makes it relatively easy for a processor at a receiving SIP node to identify a relevant field without having to parse large portions of the message.

According to a second aspect of the present invention there is provided apparatus comprising a Session Initiation Protocol agent arranged to send and receive Session Initiation Protocol messages to and from peer Session Initiation Protocol agents, characterised in that the apparatus is configured, for a received Session Initiation Protocol message, to identify a translated header field(s) data portion within or prefixed to the message and to handle the message according to that data without reference to the corresponding untranslated header field(s).

According to a third aspect of the present invention there is provided a method of handling Session Initiation Protocol messages within a communications network, characterised in that the method comprises, at a sending Session Initiation Protocol agent, translating one or more header fields of a Session Initiation Protocol message into a translated format, including the translated data in the message or prefixing it to the message, sending the message to a peer Session Initiation Protocol agent and, upon receipt of the message at the peer agent, handling the message according to the translated data without reference to the corresponding untranslated header field(s).

According to a fourth aspect of the present invention there is provided apparatus comprising a Session Initiation Protocol agent arranged to send and receive Session Initiation Protocol messages to and from peer Session Initiation Protocol agents, characterised in that the apparatus is configured, for a Session Initiation Protocol message to be sent, to include in the message a pointer or pointers to one or more header fields of the message.

According to a fifth aspect of the present invention there is provided apparatus comprising a Session Initiation Protocol agent arranged to send and receive Session Initiation Protocol messages to and from peer Session Initiation Protocol agents, characterised in that the apparatus is configured, for a received Session Initiation Protocol message, to identify a pointer or pointers contained within or prefixed to the message, to locate a header field or fields within the message using the pointer(s), and to handle the message according to the located header field(s).

According to a sixth aspect of the present invention there is provided a method of handling Session Initiation Protocol messages within a communications network, characterised in that the method comprises, at a sending Session Initiation Protocol agent, including in or prefixing to the message a pointer or pointers to one or more header fields of the message, sending the message to a peer Session Initiation Protocol agent and, upon receipt of the message at the peer agent, locating a header field or fields within the message using the pointer(s), and handling the message according to the located header field(s).

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 illustrates schematically various SIP header fields;

FIG. 2 shows an exemplary SIP header;

FIG. 3 illustrates schematically an exemplary machine readable header abstract for incorporation within a SIP message;

FIG. 4 illustrates schematically a simplified IMS network architecture;

FIG. 5 illustrates schematically a SIP node embodying the present invention;

FIG. 6 is a flow diagram illustrating a process for handling messages to be sent from a SIP node; and

FIG. 7 is a flow diagram illustrating a process for handling messages received at a SIP node.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

A Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) message contains a number of header fields and optionally a body containing the payload (which might conform to the Session Description Protocol). Whilst some of these fields are optional, others are mandatory (typically dependent on the type of SIP request). All of the header fields are encoded in a human-readable form and some even allow for multiple different encodings (e.g. timestamps).

According to the conventional approach, even though SIP proxies (which help route requests to a user's current location, authenticate and authorize users for services, implement provider call-routing policies, and provide features to users) and services may use only a fraction of the available header fields, it remains necessary to parse the complete header as the recipient does not necessarily know what the message contains and where various components are located. It is proposed here to modify the SIP message to include certain “essential” header information in a machine-friendly fashion, in addition to the usual text format data. For example, some header fields can be translated into a 32-bit or 64-bit data word, or as a single bit in a data word, with the translation being included in the header. Other header fields, such as variable length strings, may be represented by a pointer in machine-friendly form to the location and size of the actual textual data. Rather than being unstructured, as is the case for the normal SIP header fields, the translated data/pointer is structured, e.g. the data components have a fixed size and position or fields are preceded by a tag and field length identifier, e.g. Type, Length, Value/Abstract Syntax Notation One (TLV/ASN.1 format).

FIG. 1 illustrates a number of header fields that might be contained within a SIP message header including From, To, Max-Forwards, Call-ID, Cseq, and Date fields. FIG. 2 illustrates an exemplary SIP message containing entries in each of these fields. The From and To fields both contain a SIP Universal Resource Identifier (URI) and a “friendly” display name: both might be relevant for a SIP agent and so both will be made available within a machine readable abstract in the form of an offset/length pair (two 16-bit numbers). The Max-Forwards field can be represented using a single byte.

The Call-ID field can be best represented as an offset/length pair (two 16-bit numbers), whilst the CSeq field contains two parts: the sequence number can be represented as a 32-bit data word whereas the type of request can be represented as an enumerated type (enum-type: that is a code representing the actual value of the field) that is contained in a single byte. Finally, the Date field can be represented as a standard UNIX date, i.e. a 32-bit number indicating the number of seconds since midnight on 1 Jan. 1970 (for future-proofness a 64-bit number could be used). FIG. 3 illustrates an example machine readable abstract structure for inclusion within a SIP message, broken into separate bytes, where the size of the abstract is 22 (or 24) bytes.

The SIP abstract may be included within a SIP message as a separate body part, in addition to any SDP body part. The possibility of so-called multipart message bodies within a SIP message containing a single SIP header is provided for in IETF RFC2045. If the original message contains only a non-multipart body, the abstract is included as the first part in a new multipart body. In order to further accelerate the locating of the abstract within a SIP message, an extra header field (e.g. X-AbstractOffset) can be included within the header. This defines the byte offset of the abstract within the message. This new header field should be included as the first header field to minimise the resources required to parse the message. The extra header is of course optional, and can be specified in the relevant SIP standard. An advantage of this approach is that it is backwards compatible with existing SIP messages. A disadvantage is that, as SIP agents are not required to support multi-part bodies, not all SIP agents will be able to support these messages.

An alternative approach involves including the SIP abstract within an extra header field (X-Abstract). Since not all characters are allowed in the field (e.g. carriage return and line feed characters), it must be encoded with some encoding mechanism (e.g. Base64). A SIP agent receiving a SIP message constructed according to this approach needs to first parse the header to identify the extra header field and then pass the contents of the field through an appropriate decoder to recover the abstract. Although a parsing step is required, this is significantly less complex than having to parse the header for multiple header fields. An advantage of this approach is that it is fully backwards compatible with existing SIP messages, so that any SIP agent will be able to parse it. It does however add extra computation cost in terms of the encoding process.

In a still further alternative approach, the SIP abstract is prefixed to the SIP message, i.e. placed at the head of the message. It is therefore directly accessible without any parsing effort. Since the message format is not backwards compatible (SIP agents must be aware of each other's capabilities for dealing with the abstract), an additional port can be defined and at which a SIP agent expects to receive these enveloped SIP messages. The normal SIP port can still be available in a SIP compatible manner.

It will be readily appreciated that the approach described here reduces the computational cost of parsing SIP messages on many occasions. This is particularly the case when only a few basic header fields need to be processed at a node before forwarding the unmodified message (as is typical in many SIP proxies or services). The approach impacts only on the parsing and construction of SIP messages. The actual handling of the content is not affected. This means that all existing software for using SIP messages is not affected, as long as the parsing code and message generating code are separated from the message handling code (which is often the case). If this is indeed the case, the message handling code is unaffected by the change.

It will be appreciated that messages incorporating the new machine-friendly abstract can still be handled by nodes containing only legacy parsing and message generating code. As the messages still retain the text-format SIP header fields, the message can be parsed in the conventional way. The machine-friendly abstract is ignored by the legacy code.

FIG. 4 illustrates a simple IMS network comprising a number of peer SIP agents (i.e. agents which communicate at a common protocol layer). A first client terminal (i.e. a terminal which obtains services from the IMS network) Client1 1 is able to establish a (multimedia or other) call to a second client terminal Client2 2. On Client1's side of the IMS network, SIP messages pass through Proxy-Call Session Control Function, P-CSCF 3, Serving-Call Session Control Function, S-CSCF 4, and Interrogating-Call Session Control Function, I-CSCF 5 SIP proxies. In some cases messages are routed through one or more SIP ASs 6. Messages may also pass through further SIP proxies and ASs on the Client2 side of the IMS network 7.

FIG. 5 illustrates schematically a SIP node comprising a SIP agent 9, translation means 10, and SIP message modifier 11. Considering Client1 as the sending SIP node, the translation means 10 translates relevant portions of the header to create the machine-readable abstract, whilst the SIP message modifier 11 incorporates the translated information into the SIP message to be sent. The translation means 10 also operates on incoming SIP messages to recover relevant header data from any machine-readable abstract contained within the message, and passes the data to the relevant applications. Similar functions may be implemented at Client2 and at the network nodes. In the case where the message is modified to include a machine-readable pointer to relevant fields of the SIP header, the translation means is responsible for generating these pointers.

FIGS. 6 and 7 are flow diagrams illustrating methods for handling messages to be sent from a SIP node and for handling messages received at a SIP node respectively.

It will be appreciated by the person of skill in the art that various modifications may be made to the above described embodiments without departing from the scope of the present invention. According to one modification, a node sending a SIP message may include both a translation of one or more SIP header fields and a pointer or pointers to untranslated fields. 

The invention claimed is:
 1. A network node comprising a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) agent configured to send and receive SIP messages to and from other network nodes comprising peer SIP agents, comprising: a translator operative to translate one or more unstructured header fields of a SIP message into an alternative, structured format with predetermined fields having a fixed size and position and variable length fields represented by offset and length fields; and a message modifier operative to include the translated fields within a payload of the SIP message, together with the untranslated fields, and further operative to include within a SIP message header field, a pointer to a position of the translated fields within the SIP message, the pointer comprising a start location and a data block size.
 2. The network node of claim 1, wherein the message modifier is operative to include the translated fields within a separate multipart body of the SIP message.
 3. The network node of claim 1, wherein the translator is operative to translate a SIP message header field selected from the group consisting of From, To, Max-Forwards, Call-ID, Cseq, and Date.
 4. The network node of claim 1, wherein the SIP agent is a network element selected from the group consisting of a user terminal, a SIP proxy, and a SIP Application Server.
 5. A network node comprising a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) agent configured to send and receive SIP messages to and from other network nodes comprising peer SIP agents, comprising: a translator operative to identify one or more translated header fields having a structured data format with predetermined fields having a fixed size and position and variable length fields represented by offset and length fields in a data portion within a payload of a received SIP message, and within a pointer in a SIP message header field identifies a position of the translated fields within the SIP message, the pointer comprising a start location and a data block size; and wherein the SIP agent is operative to handle the SIP message according to the translated header fields without reference to the corresponding untranslated header fields.
 6. The network node of claim 5, wherein the SIP agent is a network element selected from the group consisting of a user terminal, a SIP proxy, and a SIP Application Server.
 7. A method of handling Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) messages within a communications network, comprising: at a sending SIP agent, translating one or more unstructured header fields of a SIP message into a translated, structured format with predetermined fields having a fixed size and position and variable length fields represented by offset and length fields; including the translated data in a payload of the SIP message including within a SIP message header field, a pointer to a position of the translated fields within the SIP message, the pointer comprising a start location and a data block size; and sending the message to a peer SIP agent; and at a receiving SIP agent, handling the SIP message according to the translated data, without reference to the corresponding untranslated header fields.
 8. A network node comprising a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) agent configured to send and receive SIP messages to and from other network nodes comprising peer SIP agents, comprising: a translator operative to include, in an SIP message to be sent, translated SIP header fields in a structured format with predetermined fields having a fixed size and position and variable length fields represented by offset and length fields, and a pointer or pointers comprising a start location and a data block size and pointing to the translated header fields; and a message modifier operative to include the pointer or pointers within the SIP message.
 9. The network node of claim 8, wherein the SIP agent is operative to include the pointer or pointers in the SIP message header, in front of any text-based SIP message header fields.
 10. A network node comprising a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) agent configured to send and receive SIP messages to and from other network nodes comprising peer SIP agents, comprising: a translator operative, for a received SIP message, to identify a pointer or pointers contained within the SIP message, the pointer or pointers each comprising a start location and a data block size and pointing to translated SIP header fields in a structured format with predetermined fields having a fixed size and position and variable length fields represented by offset and length fields; and locate the translated SIP header field or fields within the message using the pointers; and wherein the SIP agent is operative to handle the message according to the located header fields.
 11. A method of handling Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) messages within a communications network, comprising: at a sending SIP agent, including in the SIP message a pointer or pointers comprising a start location and a data block size to one or more translated SIP header fields in a structured format with predetermined fields having a fixed size and position and variable length fields represented by offset and length fields within the message; and sending the message to a peer SIP agent; and at a receiving SIP agent, locating a header field or fields within the message using the pointers; and handling the message according to the located header fields. 